Friday, April 22, 2011

Finito!

Ooookay. If you remember, a couple months ago I posted here that I was going to start writing a new short story, and that I would finish the damn thing. I think I said something like "1,000 words per day, death before dishonor." Well, the title of the story is "River's End" and it's finally done. So how'd I do?

Feb 24 - Apr 22 = 58 days
Final word count: 6,675

Words per day: 115

Yeah. Not so much.

In my defense, I attempted a different writing style than I'm used to. In the past, I've always been an outliner, and this time I decided just to wing it. That didn't work out so well, and I ended up abandoning the story for a better part of a month and a half. Then, finally, when I was printing an excerpt to share with my writers' group, inspiration struck and I knew how to make it work.

It's kind of like when you look at a piece of art and can't tell what it is, then you turn your head sideways and suddenly see how it goes together? That's kind of what writing this story was like. Still, I'm happy with the end product. I'll set it aside for a couple of days, then polish it up and set it loose in the wild.

What's next? Well, Kerlak has a story call for Dreams of Steam II, for which submissions are due May 31. I have an earlier deadline than that, though, because I swore to another writing group I'm involved with that on May 5 I would present them with either a finished first draft or my own severed head.

That gives me just under two weeks. Better get cracking.

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